Nov. 17, 2012

Lori Guglielmo surrounds herself at her Connecticut home Nov. 14, 2012 with memories of her brother, Anthony Guglielmo, a Port Chester plumber. His murder in 2011 remains unsolved and his teenage daughter is a suspect. In an interview with The Journal News, Lori Guglielmo talks about her conversation with the girl just hours after the killing. / Matthew Brown / The Journal News

Written by

Shawn Cohen and Jonathan Bandler

Anthony Guglielmo and his daughter Nicole in an undated family snapshot. / Courtesy Lori Guglielmo

Lori Guglielmo has surrounded herself at her home with memories of her brother, Anthony Guglielmo, shown with her in a family picture.

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PORT CHESTER — Within hours of her father’s death, 14-year-old Nicole Guglielmo confided to an aunt that her fingerprints would be found on the carving knife that killed him.

The Port Chester girl also described standing over her father, Anthony Guglielmo, as he lay gurgling on the floor after suffering a fatal chest wound.

But the most shocking thing Nicole Guglielmo said, according to her aunt, came in the form of a question.

“Do you think I did it?” the girl asked, her eyes dry and demeanor eerily calm.

Lori Guglielmo, her aunt, answered the girl with reassurance: “No,” she said. “Nicole, I love you, and no matter what happens, that will never change.”

The 48-year-old paralegal, long a confidante and mentor to her niece, has since lost faith in her response.

It was later on Sept. 11, 2011, that police identified Nicole Guglielmo as a suspect, raising doubts about the teen’s story that a mysterious intruder broke into their Mortimer Street apartment.

Fourteen months later, the homicide remains unsolved. In hopes of generating new leads, Lori Guglielmo for the first time shared details of their conversation and other information about her niece, her brother and the child’s mother. In emails and interviews with The Journal News, she painted a dark portrait of a girl in crisis.

“I don’t know if Nicole killed my brother, but as God is my witness, I do know she knows exactly what happened,” Guglielmo said. “I can’t explain it, but I do think Tony watched Nicole watch him die.”

Among the details Lori Guglielmo shared with the newspaper: Nicole Guglielmo’s parents divorced because of her father’s heroin use, but the girl stayed with him; she apparently was addicted to cutting herself; and, in the hours before her father’s killing, she was with a 21-year-old boyfriend.

And she left a cryptic message — “You are my heroine” — on her own Facebook page the morning of her father’s death.

That status update was posted from her phone at 1:53 a.m. Where Nicole Guglielmo was at the time is unclear. At some point early that morning, she took a cab home from her boyfriend’s house a few blocks away.

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Anthony Guglielmo, 54, had been killed sometime between 1:30 and 3:30 a.m., police estimated just after his death. Nicole Guglielmo told her aunt that she went to sleep that morning, woke up and thought she might have seen a man with a knife, but fell back asleep. When she woke up again later, she found her father bleeding on the floor.

Whether Nicole Guglielmo relayed the same details to her aunt as she did to police is unclear. Port Chester officers spoke briefly with the girl at her house and again at police headquarters. But once her lawyer, Andrew Quinn, arrived, the interview stopped. Nicole Guglielmo has not spoken with police since.

The girl, now 15, attending high school and living with her mother in Mount Vernon, also has severed ties with her father’s side of the family, including Lori Guglielmo, who had offered comfort during previous crises.

“It all started when Nicole called me one night and said, ‘Aunt Lori, I need you,’ ” she said of a conversation a couple of years before the killing in which the girl confided that she’d been cutting herself and that she “wanted to get away from her life.”

“We would text and talk into all hours of the night,” Lori Guglielmo said. “She was very, very troubled.”

Nicole’s troubles grew so great, the aunt said, that a Child Protective Services worker asked her to seek custody of Nicole. Lori Guglielmo said she did try to enroll Nicole Guglielmo in a residential treatment center, but the girl’s mother, Peggy Guglielmo, wouldn’t allow it.

As Lori Guglielmo describes it, her niece was always a “big-hearted, beautiful girl,” but also a “very untamable child,” perhaps because of ongoing family turmoil. Her parents divorced when she was 3 because of her father’s addiction. Nicole Guglielmo maintained contact with her mother, but lived with her father. According to the aunt, the mother abandoned Nicole because “she didn’t want the responsibility of being a mother.”

Nicole’s father worked long hours as a plumber to support her. He kicked his heroin habit and was taking methadone to prevent withdrawal symptoms.

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In July 2009, police received a report that Anthony Guglielmo physically abused the girl. The case was referred to CPS, and there was no arrest.

Roseann DiBiasi, a longtime friend of Anthony Guglielmo’s, said the girl accused her father of abuse several times, posting allegations on Facebook that she quickly took down and also raising allegations to her and her husband, Joe.

“She started rumors about abuse because he wouldn’t let her go out with friends,” DiBiasi said.

Nicole, who Lori Guglielmo said was enrolled in alternative classes at Port Chester Middle School in 2011 and frequently skipped classes, often went out with older boys. Months before the slaying, her father chased one of her boyfriends from the house, Joe DiBiasi said.

DiBiasi went motorcycling with his friend the day before the killing. As they parted, Anthony Guglielmo said he planned to take his daughter to a block party. It’s unclear whether they went.

Later that night, Anthony Guglielmo stopped by a local bar and his daughter met with her boyfriend, 21-year-old Juan Adrover. The newspaper reached Adrover by phone, but he declined comment.

She then took a cab home to the first-floor apartment she shared with her father at 235 Mortimer St.

A few hours later, just before 5:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011, she called police. Upstairs neighbors said they heard the girl screaming, “Oh my God? My father is dying!” on what they believe was her call to 911 dispatchers.

But according to police, Anthony Guglielmo may have been dead for hours, from a single stab wound to the heart.

“Daddy’s dead,” Nicole told her aunt during a phone call after she was questioned by police. Aunt and niece arranged to meet at Peggy Guglielmo’s home.

“My sister and husband drove me,” Lori Guglielmo said. “I sat in the back seat in my own world, going through the events of the morning, going to the apartment, talking with the detectives, finding out that Nicole said she was sleeping from about midnight until she found her father, knowing that that was not the truth as she posted a status on Facebook at 1:53 a.m.”

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Arriving in Mount Vernon, Lori Guglielmo said that while she was overcome, her niece appeared “calm, serene, blank. No puffy red eyes, just sitting there.”

During their walk, Lori Guglielmo kept her doubts to herself, offering support.

Nicole Guglielmo told her she had a great night with her father. The girl said she went to bed, woke up at some point and “thought she saw a man with a knife, but wasn’t sure,” then fell back asleep. Waking up again, the girl said, she found her father in the living room.

“She said she stood behind him and was looking down at him, he was gurgling and there was a knife next to him,” Lori Guglielmo recalled. “She said that her fingerprints will be on the knife because it was her knife.”

“Nicole and I sat down on the curb, and she told me that whoever that was with the knife must have broke in,” the aunt said. “She asked me if I thought it was gang-related.”

The girl then asked, for a second time, “Do you think I did it?”

That was the last time Lori Guglielmo saw her niece.

Quinn, Nicole’s high-powered lawyer who was referred by one of her relatives, said he has directed the girl not to speak with anyone about the case. He said she told police everything she knew and maintains her innocence.

The Journal News has made repeated efforts, by phone and in person, to reach the girl, her mother and her mother’s side of the family.

Tulio Fiorenza, Nicole Guglielmo’s maternal grandfather, was the only family member to comment.

“My granddaughter and all of us are trying to make the best of it given the circumstances,” she said. “She’s in school, trying to come through a horrible thing that happened. We’re trying to help her out during this unbelievable event.”

Port Chester police are not commenting on their conversations with Nicole Guglielmo and have revealed no new details of the investigation or whether any other suspects have been identified.

“It’s not a cold case. It’s very active,” said Detective Lt. Royal Monroe, who is heading the investigation.

In the hours and days after the killing, they cast doubts on Nicole’s account. She had made inconsistent statements, they said, and while her 911 call at 5:25 a.m. suggested the killing had just occurred, they estimated Anthony Guglielmo had been dead two to four hours when police arrived at the apartment. A garbage can under an open side window with a cut screen seemed like a scene staged to portray a break-in, they said.

Police acknowledge Nicole Guglielmo’s constitutional right to remain silent, but they question her unwillingness to help them further.

“Someone killed her father,” the lieutenant said. “You’d think she’d be here cooperating with the investigation.”